The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

Having uttered these furious words, Napoleon repaired to his council of state, and there denounced the legislative senate, as composed of one part of traitors and eleven of dupes. In place of assisting, said he, they impede me. Our attitude alone could have repelled the enemy—they invite him. We should have presented a front of brass—they lay open wounds to his view. I will not suffer their report to be printed. They have not done their duty, but I will do mine—I dissolve the Legislative Senate. And the Emperor did accordingly issue his decree, proroguing indefinitely that assembly, the last feeble shadow of popular representation in France.

The greatest confusion already began to pervade almost every department of the public service. The orders of the government were more peremptory than ever, and they were hourly more neglected. Whole bands of conscripts, guilty of endeavouring to escape, were tried by military commissions and decimated. Even close to the barriers of Paris such executions were constantly going on; and all in vain. The general feeling was that of sullen indifference. Hireling musicians paraded the streets, singing fine-new ballads in honour of the Emperor, to the long-forgotten tune of ça ira; the passengers gathered round them, and drowned the strains in hooting and laughter. In every saloon discussions such as the police had long suppressed were urged without ceremony. This will not continue; the cord is too much stretched—it will soon be over; such was the universal language. Talleyrand, hearing an officer express his alarm and astonishment, made answer in words which have passed into a proverb:—It is the beginning of the end.

During this uneasy pause, Napoleon at last dismissed his venerable prisoner of Fontainebleau. It is not unlikely that, in the altered state of Italy, he thought the arrival of the Pope might tend to produce some dissension among his enemies in that quarter; and, in effect, when Pius reached Rome, he found the capital of the Catholic world in the hands of Murat, who had ere then concluded his treaty with Francis, and was advancing into the north of Italy, in the view of co-operating in the campaign against Beauharnois, with the Austrians on the one side, and on the other, with an English force recently landed at Leghorn, under Lord William Bentinck.

He also unlocked the gates of Valençay on Ferdinand of Spain; and, without doubt, the letter, in which he announced this intention to his injured victim, will ever be recorded among the prime instances of his audacity. He informed Ferdinand that the English were spreading jacobin principles in Spain, and attacking the foundations of the throne, the aristocracy, and the church; and that he, therefore, was anxious to see him at the head of affairs in the kingdom, provided he would expel the English, and re-establish its relations with France, on the footing of the peace which gave Godoy his title. Ferdinand durst not execute any treaty without consulting the Cortes. They disdained to treat at all with Napoleon. He then liberated the King unconditionally; and after five years' captivity, Ferdinand re-entered Spain, amidst the all but universal acclamations of a nation, who had bled at every pore in his cause, and whom his government was destined ere long to satisfy that they had bled in vain. Napoleon, no doubt, understood well what sort of a present he was conferring on the Spaniards when he restored Ferdinand, and probably calculated that his arrival would fill the country with civil tumults, sufficient to paralyse its arm for foreign war. And—had the King returned but a year earlier—such, in all likelihood, would have been the consequence. Once more Napoleon was too late in doing good that evil might follow.

For some time, thanks to the slavery of the Parisian press, the population of the capital remained in ignorance as to the proceedings of the Allies on the Rhine. Indeed—such was still the influence of the Emperor's military reputation—the inhabitants of the French provinces on that frontier, continued to believe it impossible that any foreign army should dare to invade their soil, until they that had ears to hear, and eyes to see, were perforce undeceived. Schwartzenberg, with the Grand Army, at length crossed the Rhine, between Basle and Schaffhausen, on the 20th of December, and disregarding the claim of the Swiss to preserve neutrality, advanced through that territory unopposed, and began to show themselves in Franche-Comté, in Burgundy, even to the gates of Dijon. On the 1st of January, 1814, the Silesian Army, under Blucher, crossed the river at various points between Rastadt and Coblentz; and shortly after, the Army of the North, commanded by Witzingerode and Bulow (for Bernadotte declined having any part in the actual invasion of France) began to penetrate the frontier of the Netherlands. The wealthier inhabitants of the invaded provinces escaped to Paris, bearing with them these tidings; the English détenûs of Verdun were seen traversing the capital on their route to more distant quarters; the state prisoners of Vincennes itself, under the walls of Paris, were removed. The secret, in a word, could no longer be kept. It was known to every one that the Pyrenees had been crossed by Wellington, and the Rhine by three mighty hosts, amounting together to 300,000 men, and including representatives of every tongue and tribe, from the Germans of Westphalia to the wildest barbarians of Tartary. Persons of condition despatched their plate and valuables to places at a distance from the capital; many whole families removed daily; and the citizens of Paris were openly engaged in laying up stores of flour and salted provisions, in contemplation of a siege.

The violation of the Swiss territory was in itself indefensible; but he who had so often disdained all rules of that kind in his own person, who had seized D'Enghien, who had traversed Bareuth, could hardly hope to be listened to when he complained of Schwartzenberg's proceeding. The allied generals, moreover, proclaimed everywhere as they advanced, that they came as the friends not the enemies of the French nation, and that any of the peasantry who took up arms to oppose them must be content to abide the treatment of brigands. This assuredly was a flagrant outrage against the most sacred and inalienable rights of mankind: but Napoleon had set the fatal example himself in Lombardy, and followed it without a blush, in Egypt, in Germany, in Spain, in Portugal, and but yesterday in Russia. Here also, therefore, his reclamations moved no feeling favourable to himself; and the time was gone by when the French people would have been ready to take fire at so lawless an aggression upon their national rights:—these Napoleon's tyranny had trampled down ere strangers dared to insult them. There were some few scattered instances of resistance; but in general, the first advance of the Allies was regarded with indifference; and it was only at a later period, when the invading generals were no longer able to maintain strict discipline among their barbarous hordes of horsemen, then scattered over a wide extent of country, that the sense of individual suffering afforded even a glimpse of hope to Napoleon, and those who, like him, were eager to oppose a national insurrection to the allied march.

Meantime, nearer and nearer every day the torrent of invasion rolled on—sweeping before it, from post to post, the various corps which had been left to watch the Rhine. Marmont, Mortier, Victor, and Ney, commanding in all about 50,000 men, retired of necessity before the enemy. It had been considered as certain that much time must be occupied with the besieging of the great fortresses on the Rhenish frontier. But it was now apparent that the Allies had resolved to carry the war into the interior, without waiting for the reduction of these formidable outworks. Their numbers were such that they could afford to mask them, and still pass on with hosts overwhelmingly superior to all those of Napoleon's lieutenants. These withdrew, and with them, and behind them, came crowds of the rustic population possessing any means of transport. Carts and waggons, crammed with terrified women and children, thronged every avenue to the capital. It was at last necessary that the Emperor should break silence to the Parisians, and re-appear in the field.

The invasion of France, however, rallied around Napoleon some persons of eminence who had long hung aloof from him. Carnot in particular, who, ever since he opposed the assumption of the imperial title, had remained in retirement, came forward to offer his sword in what he now considered as the cause of his country. Nor did Buonaparte fail to receive such proposals as they deserved. He immediately sent his old enemy to command the great city and fortress of Antwerp; and similar instances of manly confidence might be mentioned to his honour.

On the 22nd of January the first official news of the invasion appeared; the Moniteur announced that Schwartzenberg had entered Switzerland on the 20th of December, and that Blucher also had crossed the Rhine on the first day of the year; thus confessing openly the deliberate deceit of its previous silence. The next morning, being Sunday, the officers of the National Guard were summoned to the Tuileries. They lined the Saloon of the Marshals, to the number of 900, altogether ignorant of the purpose for which they had been convoked. The Emperor took his station in the centre of the hall; and immediately afterwards the Empress with the King of Rome (carried in the arms of Countess Montesquiou), appeared at his side. "Gentlemen," said Napoleon, "France is invaded; I go to put myself at the head of my troops, and, with God's help and their valour, I hope soon to drive the enemy beyond the frontier." Here he took Maria Louisa in one hand and her son in the other, and continued—"But if they should approach the capital, I confide to the National Guard the Empress and the King of Rome"—then correcting himself, he said in a tone of strong emotion—"my wife and my child." Several officers stepped from their places and approached him; and tears were visible on the cheeks even of those who were known to be no worshippers of the Emperor, or hearty supporters of his cause.

A Frenchman can rarely resist a scene: and such this was considered, and laughed at accordingly, ere next morning. It is, nevertheless, difficult to refuse sympathy to the chief actor. Buonaparte was sincerely attached to Maria Louisa, though he treated her rather with a parental tenderness than like a lover; and his affection for his son was the warmest passion in his heart, unless, indeed, we must except his pride and his ambition, both of which may be well supposed to have merged for a moment in the feeling which shook his voice.